If you live in the pre-60s building, your home is at more risk of setting on fire because of electrical overload. Here's what you can do to avoid it:

Some time ago before Ecoisme's CEO, Ivan Pasichnyk, installed the energy monitor in his apartment, smelled something weird in his apartment. Together with our electrical engineer, Oleksii Kasyan, they checked the electrical panel and found this terrible situation inside:

Since the house is old, its electrical network has not been designed to support a modern load, when you have water boiler, air conditioner and kettle running at the same time.

This is one of the most frequent causes of home fires. Based on UK Government statistics, electricity causes 20 000 home fires per year. It is almost the half of all home fires in the UK! Every year, electrical accidents cause more than 70 people deaths and 350 000 serious injuries.

Faulty or aging wires is one of the most common causes of such fires. Here are some signs which will help you to understand that you have an old electrical network in your home in the UK, built before 1960th:- Cables coated in black rubber, lead or fabric;

- A fuse box with a wooden back, cast iron switches, or a haphazard mixture of fuse boxes; Wall-mounted light switches in bathrooms;

Also, make sure that you do not overload your extension cords. They are designed to supply up to 13A (in some cases up to 10A). You can easily check whether your extension cords are not overloaded using overload calculator below (supplied by Electrical Safety First):

You can also use energy monitoring systems like Ecoisme which will suggest you if your fuses are overloaded. Ivan's apartment is one of the testing facilities for Ecoisme sensors. Eliminating overload and adjusting electricity consumption was one of the issues Ecoisme solved.